Elemental

Sulphurous

Thiols, sulphides and the alliaceous register: garlic, onion, gas, truffle

sulphurous 40 notes 310 materials 11 anchors

What it smells like

The odour of divalent sulphur. It is alone in the vocabulary for inverting its own hedonic sign with concentration. The same thiol reads as blackcurrant or grapefruit at parts per billion, and as rotting onion a decade of dilution higher. Attested by the human panel as `sulfidic` and `garlic, onion`.

Where it stops

Sulphurous is a broken chemical bond. Animalic is a mammal. They co-occur in durian and civet, and neither implies the other. That confusion is why asafoetida and garlic carried animalic scores no source supported.

Smells most like

burnt match - and in the same register, egg, asafoetida.

Notes that load on it

Notes from our catalogue whose position on this facet is 0.40 or higher, strongest first. A note is not filed under one facet: it carries a value on all 34 at once, and these are the ones where this axis is doing real work.

Materials that carry it

Real substances, each keyed by its CAS registry number, that an external perfumery vocabulary publishes with a term meaning this facet outright. This is the layer that makes a facet checkable against something outside our own database.

Materials carrying this facet, with registry number, source terms and regulatory status
Material CAS Terms Status
allyl mercaptan CAS 870-23-5 garlic, onion, onion cooked onion, sulfurous
dipropyl trisulfide CAS 6028-61-1 garlic, onion, onion green onion, sulfurous
butyl ethyl disulfide CAS 63986-03-8 garlic, onion, onion cooked onion, sulfurous
zinc157429 CAS 59324-17-3 garlic, onion, onion green onion, sulfurous
1-butanethiol CAS 109-79-5 garlic, onion, onion cooked onion, sulfurous
3-methyl-1-butanethiol CAS 541-31-1 garlic, onion, onion green onion, sulfurous
1-(ethyltrisulfanyl)propane CAS 31499-70-4 garlic, onion, onion green onion, sulfurous
1-(1-sulfanylpropylsulfanyl)propane-1-thiol CAS 53897-60-2 garlic, onion, onion green onion, sulfurous
methanethiol CAS 74-93-1 cabbage, garlic, sulfurous
propanethial CAS 23328-62-3 garlic, onion, sulfurous
propanedithiol CAS 88497-17-0 onion, onion cooked onion, sulfurous
diallyl sulfide CAS 592-88-1 garlic, onion, sulfurous
benzyl mercaptan CAS 100-53-8 garlic, onion, sulfurous
dimethyl sulfide CAS 75-18-3 cabbage, onion, sulfurous
diallyl trisulfide CAS 2050-87-5 garlic, onion green onion, sulfurous
diethyl trisulfide CAS 3600-24-6 garlic, onion, sulfurous
dimethyl disulfide CAS 624-92-0 cabbage, onion, sulfurous
dimethyl trisulfide CAS 3658-80-8 onion cooked onion, onion green onion, sulfurous
methyl thiobutyrate CAS 2432-51-1 cabbage, garlic, sulfurous
allyl methyl sulfide CAS 10152-76-8 garlic, onion, sulfurous
allyl propyl sulfide CAS 27817-67-0 garlic, onion green onion, sulfurous
butyl methyl sulfide CAS 628-29-5 garlic, onion, sulfurous
diallyl tetrasulfide CAS 2444-49-7 garlic, onion, sulfurous
difurfuryl disulfide CAS 4437-20-1 cabbage, onion, sulfurous
ethyl methyl sulfide CAS 624-89-5 cabbage, garlic, sulfurous
s-propyl thioacetate CAS 2307-10-0 garlic, onion green onion, sulfurous
diisopropyl disulfide CAS 4253-89-8 cabbage, onion, sulfurous
s-ethyl ethanethioate CAS 625-60-5 garlic, onion, sulfurous
allyl methyl disulfide CAS 2179-58-0 garlic, onion green onion, sulfurous
allyl propyl disulfide CAS 2179-59-1 garlic, onion green onion, sulfurous

Showing 30 of 310. The full set ships with the published standard rather than being paginated here.

Reading the two flags

Declarable means the substance appears in Annex III of the EU Cosmetics Regulation, so it has to be named on the ingredient list once it passes a concentration threshold. IFRA means an IFRA Standard restricts or prohibits its use. Both are facts about the substance, not about any fragrance: a perfume can contain a declarable material below the threshold and never print it, and a restricted material used within its limit is used correctly.

The source also supplies no common name for a large share of materials, so those display as a bare registry number and are ranked last. They are kept because they are real evidence: dropping them would make the vocabulary look better described than it is.

Anchor terms

A facet on its own is just a word we chose. An anchor is what makes it checkable: a term in an external, independently maintained vocabulary of odour descriptions, built for perfumery materials rather than for us. The material list above is drawn from the direct terms only, because a partial term corroborates too weakly to stand as evidence on its own.

Direct Terms that mean this facet outright
  • cabbage
  • garlic
  • garlic, onion
  • mercaptan
  • onion
  • onion cooked onion
  • onion green onion
  • skunk
  • sulfidic
  • sulfurous
  • sulfury
Partial Terms that lean this way but also load elsewhere

None

The rest of Elemental

The other facets in this family. A note can load on any of them at the same time as this one, so they are neighbours rather than alternatives.

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